ABSTRACT
Organised around the motivations that drove settlers west through St Louis, the Museum comprises collections, tactile models and maps and a large number of audio-visual films and animations. As Bill Haley of design studio hsd describes so vividly, the media was selected to not only show the scale of landscape and movement, but to hear scale and experience landscape by touch and feel. The Universal Design Group (UDG) also worked with the US-based National Center on Accessibility, which advises on accessibility across the wider Gateway Arch project. Similarly, the design team had to develop new skills in giving clear spoken descriptions of exhibition elements and working simultaneously with different communicative media such as the large-scale plans and tactile models. New designs would be worked up and sent back to the UDG for comment and approval following the receipt of written comments.
